


Little Ears

by threesipsmore



Series: Children of the Sea [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 06:30:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6943621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threesipsmore/pseuds/threesipsmore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drake insists that he at least be fifteen this time. Bonney obliges and so here he is now with a younger Basil Hawkins, trailing along the embankments of rainwater patties, out searching for a factory amongst the unnerving shadows of the farmers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Ears

Patties brimming in rainwater, rice stretching out in the sun. Sweat mixes with that water as Basil and Drake wander along that tawny road. Drake keeps good hold of Basil’s hair, his now younger fingers caught comfortably in the tangles. 

Basil didn’t usually let his hair get all miffed up like this, but the heat of the day was frying them both, mussing them up with the dirt from the road and the bugs from the south.

It’d been Nami’s idea. Bonney had agreed willingly enough. Drake had insisted he be at least fifteen this time, Basil just a bit shorter now as they wander along the country side.

Kaido was trying to mimic the SMILE. He had a factory out here, but they couldn’t very well attack it if they didn’t know where it was.

Any one of these farmers could be an enemy. They were just vagrant children with murky hands, wandering about aimlessly. Their parents had dropped them off and never come back, if anyone asks.

Drake sighs, picking at his hat and setting it gently atop Basil’s burning face. It’s a wide-brimmed thing, straw like Luffy’s and the shadow of it consume’s the Magician’s features. “They didn’t give us much to eat,” Drake comments absently, hefting his pack up a bit more. “Three more days this way and then we’d have to turn around.”

It’s been five days already. Five days under the stars, five days of tepid nights and airless days. The mountains were majestic but greedy, eating up all the wind just as Bonney would often eat all the food.

“Your face,” Basil vaguely mentions. Drake smiles a little. “I’m pretty tan, I’ll last the rest of the day, no problem.”

Basil never comments on Drake’s affliction with his hair, and that leaves the boy more opportunities to curl a strand around his finger. Basil doesn’t react much. Drake likes it, it’s less of a hassle when he can just think to himself.

Drake had worked for Kaido, knew his temper. Basil had been subjected to the man as an enemy, so he knew it all the better.

“You two lost?”

He’s not entirely used to the tones people use with them. He’d thought the wider shoulders of a fifteen year old would’ve warded some of them back without being too suspicious.

The woman wipes her hands along her apron, the sweat upon her brow heavy. She’s knee deep in the water, peering over at them curiously.

“Was dropped off a few days back, parents didn’t come back,” Drake dismisses, “we’re just looking for somewhere quiet to work things out.”

“Well,” she’s considering something then, “I don’t think _that’s_ the way you want to go. Your parents didn’t come back? So they abandoned you here then?”

Drake doesn’t like this. She’s fidgety, the man behind her slowing in his movements. He tugs at Basil’s hair gently, “We’ll be fine—“

“Have some coffee then,” she says quickly, “I know it’s not for kids, but that’s all we got here, coffee and rotten milk and rainwater. So come inside, I’m done with my shift anyways. I can’t possibly let you two wander along into the nighttime out there.”

She couldn’t possibly be any harm, but it’s the others so keen on the conversation that bother him.

“Drake.”

Basil seems to be making the call here and so Drake nods curtly, fingers still in that hair.

* * *

 

The Strawhat’s navigator had said something about kids, something about experiments and SMILES and an ex-warlord with an affinity for pink.

So when the shadows creep that night, Drake takes to shuffling towards Basil, hand on his shoulder gently so as to not startle him. But Basil is already awake, nodding minutely.

These bastards had no idea who they were. Drake, though small and wispy now, was still a rather large, rather angry dinosaur.

But then those shadows disappear and he slides his fingers away, brow furrowed. Basil is facing him, curled just slightly, the light of the hallway casting his face darker. Drake looks to covertly peek past the boy’s form, keeping up all night just in case they try something.

But it’s hard, with Basil staring at him like that.

“What is it,” Drake finally murmurs, allowing his gaze to shift just a bit. Basil’s eyes slide shut, and his head cants up just slightly.

Drake understands though he’s never been given such a motion before. He inches his fingers through the hair, breaking the knots at the end as he skims through it carefully once more. Basil seems to sink into the pillow they’d given him, nuzzling it as he allowed himself some rest.

Drake’s cheeks begin to burn at the implications of it all. Hesitantly, nervously, he allows his thumb to brush the flesh of an ear on the next stroke, and Basil shifts but doesn’t object.

Drake trails his fingers along the warm skin underneath the hair next, along the neck and the bones that jut behind the ear.

Somewhere in the night those shadows come back, and Law’s curious probing returns from a distant memory— _so tell me, Drake, how many men have you eaten?_

* * *

 

There’s a factory, sure, but it’s a broken, green-infested bit of cement and iron. He grazes along it in his more perceptive form just in case, but the lack of moving parts and warm, blotted temperatures convinces him. This one had been a flop, and subsequently abandoned.

He’s lost in his own mind when Basil’s head tilts, and he realizes he hasn’t played with that hair since the early morning. So he twirls a few locks about his finger as they pass the dead man once more, his two sons torn apart off to the side.

Bonney is waiting for them there on that ship, chin in hand, and Drake finds that he lacks the courage to toy with Basil’s hair in his larger form. The mere regality of his growth throws him off. While Basil maintained that tilted chin of indifference as a kid, there was a lick of superiority in his adulthood.

Drake didn't have the gall to touch him like this.  

Not yet, at least.


End file.
